by The article explains how you can quickly remove or resend emails that are stuck in your Outbox. The solutions work on all systems and all versions of Outlook 2007 to Outlook 365.
An email message may become stuck in Outlook because of different reasons. You can find the detailed information about the causes and remedies in this article: Why an email is stuck in Outbox and how to fix this.
But no matter what the reason is, you need to get a stuck e-mail out of the Outbox somehow. In fact, there are several ways you can remove a hanging message and we are going to cover them from simplest to more complex.
How to resend a message stuck in the Outbox
A very simple two-step method that you should try first.
- Drag the stuck message from the Outlook Outbox to any other folder, e.g. to Drafts.
- Switch to the Drafts folder, open the message and click the Send button. That's it! The message will be sent.
Tip. Before moving a stuck message to the Drafts folder, go to the Sent Items folder and check if the message was actually sent. If it was, delete the message from the Outbox since there is no need to perform the steps above.
How to remove a stuck email from the Outbox
A quick and easy way to delete a hanging message.
If the message has been hanging in your Outbox for a while and you don't actually want to sent it anymore, follow the below steps to delete it.
- Go to the Outbox and double click a stuck message to open it.
- Close the message.
- Right-click the message and choose Delete from the context menu.
Set Outlook to work offline and then remove a stuck message
A general solution that works in most cases.
If the previous method did not work for you, e.g. if you are continuously getting "Outlook has already begun transmitting this message", then you will have to invest a couple more minutes and go through the below steps.
Tip: Before you proceed, make sure you have given Outlook enough time to complete sending. For example, if you are a sending an email with heavy attachments, the process may take up to 10 - 15 minutes or even longer, depending on your Internet bandwidth. So, you may be thinking the message is stuck while Outlook is doing its best to transmit it.
- Set Outlook to Work Offline.
- In Outlook 2010 and higher, go to the Send/Receive tab, Preferences group and click "Work Offline".
- In Outlook 2007 and lower, click File > Work Offline.
- Close Outlook.
- Open the Windows Task Manager. You can do this by right clicking the taskbar and choosing "Start Task Manager" from the pop-up menu or by pressing CTRL + SHIFT + ESC. Then switch to the Processes tab and verify that no outlook.exe process is there. If there is one, select it and click End Process.
- Start Outlook again.
- Go to the Outbox and open a hanging message.
- Now you can either delete the stuck message or move it to the Drafts folder and remove the attachment if it is too big in size and this is the root of the problem. Then you can try to send the message again.
- Bring Outlook back on-line by clicking the "Work Offline" button.
- Click Send/Receive and see if the message is gone.
Create a new .pst file and then delete a stuck email
A more complex way, use it as the last resort if none of the above methods have worked.
- Create a new .pst file.
- In Outlook 2010 - 365, you do this via File > Account Settings > Account Settings… > Data Files > Add…
- In Outlook 2007 and older, go to File > New > Outlook Data File…
Name your new .pst file, e.g. "New PST" and click OK.
- Make the newly created .pst file the default one. In the "Accounting Settings" window, select it and click the "Set as Default" button.
- Outlook will show the "Mail Delivery Location" dialog asking you if you really want to change the Default Outlook Data file. Click OK to confirm your choice.
- Restart Outlook and you will see that your original .pst file shows up as an additional set of folders. Now you can easily remove the stuck email message from that secondary Outbox.
- Set the original .pst file as the default delivery location again (see step 2 above).
- Restart Outlook.
That's all! I hope at least one of the above techniques has worked for you. If you still have a message stuck in your Outbox, don't hesitate to leave a comment and we will try to make it send.
155 comments
Thank you worked just as you described in removing stuck mail from outbox!
Svetlana
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
So many of the other 'solutions' offered for this problem involved reinstalling Outlook, deleting and resetting up accounts, removing the Outlook Connector and reconnecting, all of which always seemed to me to like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. We users who report problems can of course provide unhelpful or misleading information to the helpers, but there seems to be a presumption amongst some of the helpers that the issue is a user issue not an Outlook issue, but a careful reading of the 'ticket' often indicates that it is not all emails that are failing to send, just one or two.
One of the problems in reporting the issue of course is that Outlook does not always provide a useful error message. The most common messages I saw was 'The ... server cannot be reached/found' which was patently untrue as other emails which used the same server were being sent, so clearly the server could be found. Outlook was unwittingly 'lying'. Oh that the developers at MS could teach Outlook to distinguish between these cases.
But you started with the simplest possible approach to the problem: treat the unsent item as a draft again. How wonderfully that worked. It was even simpler than an approach I had taken which was to start again, and copy the content of the stuck item into a new email. And your approach works..
Kind regards
How do I find the email that is stuck in the pst file. I can't even open the file. Thank you
Dragging to, and sending from, Drafts worked for me.
Over the years this problem has cropped up from time to time in various versions of Outlook. It only affects responses to meeting requests. The response appears in the Outbox, in italics, as usual. Instead of sending, the message changes to normal font style and then just sits there forever. I've never found a solution to this problem until I found your post, so thank you very much for saving my sanity! I didn't try the Work Offline trick. Just dragging the message to Drafts, opening it and hitting Send worked first time.
I'm using Outlook 2016 under Windows 10, but I've run into this problem from time to time at least as far back as Outlook 2003.
Hi all-I have just had a case where every time I tried to get rid of the stuck message, Windows Mail would go into NOT RESPONDING mode and my Mail programme would stop working so....in addition to all of the above-which I tried and still did not work as I had an huge message attachment ( my fault as I forgot to check size of photos I was sending)and after trying to get some help from MicroSoft folks ..who NOW only are trained to deal with Windows 7 and upwards....being of a very stubborn nature I would not admit defeat and after a bit of playing around I solved the "stuck message in my outbox with the huge attachment" so I will share the solution with all of you so as you don't lose anymore hair like I was...lol
[This is especially valuable if you are still using Vista, as I am, and your Windows version is 2006]
SELECT WORK OFFLINE first and foremost then:
1)left click the TOOLS button in the toolbar and select ACCOUNTS
2)select your DEFAULT MAIL and then go to the PROPERTIES button and click that
3)Go to the ADVANCED tab and look down the choices until you see SENDING and just below there should be a box saying "BREAK APART MESSAGES LARGER THAN" which is unticked-TICK this box-this will then unmask the numeric little box on the same line-make a mental note of the number in there already and then increase the value of this to its max [which should be 16000KB]
4)click the APPLY and then OK then close both little windows
*doing these steps first will free up space and allow messages to be received as when this happened to me I could not SEND nor RECEIVE*
NOW
5)still being OFFLINE, CREATE a message and send it to yourself-this will automatically go straight into your OUTBOX
6)this time when you select your OUTBOX your TEST message will be the one hi-lighted [and not the stuck one] and Windows will not throw a wobbly at you
7)Go up to your EDIT button and click it then click on SELECT ALL and all the messages within your OUTBOX will be highlighted and Windows will now decide to behave.....[she said when she did it hoping like hell it would...lol]
8)Now click on the DELETE button in the Edit box choices and Hey Presto ALL the messages in your OUTBOX will disappear and your email will start to work again as if nothing has happened-yes, you will have to redo your message you wanted to send but at least you will know your attachment needs to be adjusted size wise
9)Go back and now repeat steps 1-4 and re-adjust the numeric VALUE in the "BREAK APART MESSAGES LARGER THAN back to its original number
Close down all little windows and you should be up and running again
I hope this works for you all out there who are tearing out your hair with frustration.take care Maureen
Sometimes we get an error when we try to delete a File or a folder for no reason , but of course there is a reason.We have many damage file or blocked files.Do not worry if we want to remove the error files or too long path files from our system,here I suggest a smooth way.So use “Long path tool” software and keep yourself.
Thank you for your advise. The third section has done the job. I went to the file manager and deleted the outlook process which was running. Then i was able to delete the hanging e mail (80 MB Video). Excellent advise and a job well done.
Thanks again.
Hi
I'm running Outlook 2013. I have one email with a small pdf attachment that will not send. It does not appear in ANY folder including Drafts and Outbox and has not been received by the addressee but Outlook is constantly trying to send the message. Outlook will not close when shutting down my laptop and I have to force closure every time.
How can I delete the email?
Thanks...Richard
Hi Svetlana,
I got my mail stuck in outbox too, but the difference, they're stuck in "outbox" folder in "Server Data". I can't see them with my 2007 outlook (MAPI). The synchronization give nothing in my outbox, but when i see it from the folder size of "Server data", it shows there are some mails stuck in my outbox in "Server data". Can you tell me how to delet them?
Thanks a ton!!
I was able to delete the stuck message by end process
Thank you! Using "end process" allowed me to delete the stuck email!
Hi Svetlana
I am stuck with an E mail the last few weeks and it is in outbox and stopping other messages to be send quickly.I am trying to delete it but no response
please help me other wise
Thank you! I got several answers when I googled to find out how to delete a message stuck in my outbox. Yours is the only one that worked. I managed to move it to my Inbox and delete it from there because I had already sent it from another site and didn't want it sent twice.
Thank you! This worked like a charm and saved me from email hell! Thanks again!
when i am sending up to 5 mb mail its stuck in outbox , but receiver received many times , plz solve this issue bcoz i am facing this problem.
I am using outlook 2016.
Long path error!
"Long path tool" is very helpful for this problem. You can solve this problem like copy, delete, long path files by using this tool.
I used to have similar problems too, but after using "long path tool" everything was solved.
Hi
there is one email number shows stuck in outbox however there is no email inside, its just the number (1) showing tried the steps of workline but no fix.
Please help.
Excellent.
Thanks for your kind help.
Tried all listed steps and still no luck. I am seeing my Outbox highlighted and showing that there is 1 outbound message yet when I open the folder nothing is there. Is driving me nuts seeing this and can't seem to get it to clear off. Any suggestions?
Thank u Svetlana Cheusheva